JAMES Bond has been tricked. He’s stranded on a tiny island in the middle of a lagoon as hungry crocodiles start to circle. They crawl closer and closer. What will he do?

It’s obvious what Sean Connery would have done: wrestled the crocs into submission or blasted his way through.

But this is Roger Moore’s Bond, in “Live and Let Die.” Moore coolly examines the situation, spots a splitsecond opening and walks to safety – using the crocs as stepping stones. Brilliant.

James Bond is a symbol for postwar Britain, the Incredibly Shrinking Nation that suddenly found itself reduced from lion to fox.

“Great Britain has lost an empire and not yet found a role,” said Secretary of State Dean Acheson in 1962, the year the first Bond movie, “Dr. No,” hit theaters with Sean Connery as Agent 007.

Connery spent that movie and six other Bond flicks judo-chopping or shooting his way to glory. Audiences cheered: On-screen, if nowhere else, England still ruled the waves.

But wait a tick. Bond is the ultimate Englishman. Connery isn’t even English. (Pierce Brosnan was Irish, by the way, and George Lazenby Australian.) Connery was a Scots brute, a skull-crusher who solved problems fists first, like a dinnerjacketed John Wayne. He was forever in a towel or a swimsuit to show off his chiseled chest.

By the time the series turned to Moore – Fred Astaire to Connery’s Gene Kelly – England had found its role. He didn’t need to strip: Who needs pecs when you’ve got panache? England no longer had the means to scowl like Connery. It had to wink like Moore.

Take the best Bond movie, 1977’s “The Spy Who Loved Me.” When his Lotus is run off the road and plummets into the sea, Moore’s Bond flips a switch and the vehicle turns amphibious. Then it rolls up on the beach past gaping sunbathers. Moore simply puts the window down and casually drops a fish on the beach without saying a word.

At the outset of the same movie, Moore gets chased on skis by villains who force him to make a series of stiff jumps. As the camera pulls back on his last jump, we realize he won’t be able to survive this one: He’s going over a cliff.

The music on the soundtrack shuts off. All we hear is what Bond hears, the wind hastening him to his doom. That’s when he pulls the cord on his Union Jack parachute.

Fanfare. Bond couldn’t outmuscle the bad guys, but he will die another day.

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